Kingston University

University

Philosophy and Contemporary Critical Theory

This programme explores the specifically philosophical aspects and significance of contemporary critical theory. As understood on the programme, critical theory refers to those traditions of 20th-century European thought within which philosophy opens out onto critical diagnoses of the historical present. The course combines the study of the 2 main traditions of critical theory: the Frankfurt school and French anti-humanism and their background in Kant, Hegel, Marx and 19th-century European philosophy more generally. There is a focus on work by thinkers who have become influential only in the last 2 decades: Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Antonio Negri and Jacques Rancière.